A large number of conventional techniques for power conversion (e.g., DC-DC power conversion) rely on a converter regulation loop with a feedback factor less than unity to reduce the active filter amplifier input voltage range. However, these techniques achieve the regulation goal at the expense of system costs and a number of disadvantages that include static power loss due to divider static current consumption, decreased efficiency especially at low load/power conditions, increased thermal noise sensitivity due to higher thermal (4KTR) noise, reduced signal fidelity due to reduced signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) stemming from reduced signal level in the presence of increased noise, reduced output voltage accuracy due to divider component leakage, increased number of large passive component count leading to increased silicon area, and possible bandwidth stability issues depending on the chosen divider component values.
On the other hand, loop compensators without feedback division can exhibit challenges of error amplifier (EA) input signal-level correlated gain variation and severe bandwidth degradation posed by using a feedback factor equal to unity. Such loop compensators are subject to large gain variation which complicates loop design and stability and thus are applicable only to scenarios where limited or narrow input range of operation is pertinent.
Also presently there is a burgeoning trend in the field of portable computing power management towards usage of high-speed fully integrated or system-in-package (SiP) voltage regulators/converters to reduce system printed circuit board (PCB) area and system bill of material (BOM) cost as well as establishing fast dynamic voltage scaling (DVS) performance in response to CPU/GPU power saving needs among other factors. However with such practical embedded high-speed multi-phase power converters (e.g., DC-DC converters) having to operate at switching frequencies in the range of high tens to hundreds of megahertz (MHz), the previously neglected aforementioned system costs of using regulation loop dividers start to matter.